As you enter the Holy City , you are often struck by how inglorious it may seem to travel on desert roads , driving into a packed city of limestone buildings filled with Orthodox Jews and international visitors . Truthfully , most people are exhausted after such a long international flight , feeling jet-lagged , and slightly beat up .
Cats roam all around the city in droves . Sometimes it is hard to feel God when every site is full of tourists , while religious men smoke their cigarettes , or the yeshiva boys vape . The Arab shopkeepers try to hustle you as you walk in front them . Signs in the old city that are there to tell you not to use your phones on Shabbat . You begin to fear as the street or alley you are walking on suddenly no longer has Hebrew graffiti , and in its place is spray-painted images of Mecca and Arabic slang . The police cars drive perpetually with their overhead emergency lights on - apparently , it ’ s policy . The wall between Jew and Arab is nothing compared to the wall between the locals and tourists .
Homelessness , the occasional smell of marijuana , and the occasional rainbow flag that we know is not a tribute to Noah . Suddenly , the Holy City begins to feel quite mundane .
But then there is that moment when the veil lifts , and you stand before the Throne . Where the prophecies and histories come alive . The place where you are no longer reading the Bible , but Living it . Where the breeze of Jerusalem
reminds you of the refreshing air which the priests must have felt . Where the Hebrew chants beckon times of the prayerful watchmen that stand before the wall day and night . The roughhewn roads that Yeshua Himself may have walked on and the City , which is truly the center of the world , as if the earth itself had a heart , … that heart is Yerushalay ’ im !
That moment came for me on Erev Shabbat . I showed up a few hours before sunset . I had been traveling into northern Samaria that day and had returned to downtown Jerusalem with a heavy heart . I felt confused about what God had been showing me on my trip . My wife at home was 7 months pregnant and having a challenging
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